How will same-sex marriage rulings affect children?

The Supreme Court's decisions Wednesday on same-sex marriage reflect the nation's political divide over the issue. But experts say what these decisions may mean to children — both the kids of gay and lesbian parents and the self-image of LGBT kids — has cultural and legal implications.

"It's definitely a positive thing for children of same-sex couples," says Kathleen Hull, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who studies same-sex relationships.

"The specific legal ramifications depend on the circumstances — how that child came to be; whether it's the child of a prior heterosexual marriage. In a lot of cases, children will have expanded access to insurance and various other government benefits and protections that will come automatically as a result of having two legal parents."

Social Security benefits are an example, she says. "In states where same-sex marriage is recognized and the federal government didn't, if the non-biological parent in a same-sex couple passed away, the child in the federal government's eyes was not eligible for those benefits and now they are," Hull says.

An estimated 37% of LGBT Americans have had a child, meaning as many as 6 million U.S. children and adults have an LGBT parent, according to findings from a national study released in February by the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute, which studies gay and lesbian trends. The report "LGBT Parenting in the United States" provides a demographic portrait of LGBT parenting in the United States.

"Most attention has focused on the adults in this debate, but children are also big winners with today's rulings," agrees Adam Pertman, executive director of the Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York. "We know children derive significant benefits when their parents are married. So this is good news indeed for the girls and boys who can now live in families with the same social, economic and personal advantages as their peers who have married, heterosexual mothers and fathers."